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Round indoor pond project queries.

Hi S , The fern is Aeschynomene fluitans Sorry to hear yours is not doing well. I have tried this plant.It fail to grow well:( Apart from my shallow where it grew over the side of the tank and did well :confused:
I think its more of a bog plant. It seemed not to like the water movement in the tank. When I moved it to the back where there was less water movement it did better.

The pond is looking fantastic great idea and concept :clap:

Sadly My Wife said no to one in our home :(
 
Thanks Roy.

Greenfinger2 said:
Sadly My Wife said no to one in our home
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I got that too at first.....considering I sacrificed an entire room :) Perhaps you should wait and try again....;)It's the best "fish tank" I've ever had. I am really enjoying it, especially the reaction the fish have to it...It's like a kinder garden to them :lol:
 
Update on the SAEs.....

In the limited amount of time they've been in the tank, besides the times when they made rounds non-stop, they've been happily surfing the substrate for food, including nibbling my filter sponges... I am yet to see them touch any sort of leaf for algae.... They also disappear at night time unlike the denison barbs who can be seen swimming around...

So my SAES don't eat algae and behave like bottom fish :rolleyes: But I quite like them. They are fun to watch swimming around in a group. They tend to sort of "nudge" each other from time to time and tend to do everything at the same time, even when nibbling the pre-filter sponges. I think algae wise, I am feeding a bit too much these days trying to make sure everyone gets a bite and it's not unknown that SAEs eat everything else besides algae. ....

The denison barbs colour up more and more every day. When I got them they were all grey. They got orange nose, dorsal fin and yellow dots on the tails a few days after. Today I am noticing body colour change-more yellow. They've learned to come up to the "front" of the tank for food. I feed them when the lights are on otherwise the clown loaches occupy the front area where I feed and spook all other fish.

The clown loaches were out today with the lights on when I was sitting and watching for about 20 min or so which is an improvement..
If I have time in the morning one of these days, I'll take a video of handfeeding them.
 
Well, here is my new Kessil light.....Not as powerful as I thought but it's quite nice. The flood light is now illuminating the back of the emersed plants..

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Impossible to take pictures of the "fast and furious" denison barbs but here is a bad attempt at showing the colour they're getting. It's been just two weeks and from completely grey fish they are now looking half decent although very small yet...

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I wonder when are the SAEs going to settle........

They are making my head spin... They still do circles around the tank...From time to time the odd one would go clean a leaf or join the barbs but the moment he sees the rest passing, he goes "at the races"...So much about them fish being algae eaters :rolleyes:...They like the fish food too much too...But they are such fun, extremely active. And although generally grey/brown looking, they are really shiny when they turn side ways. They've got a copper colour shiny patch just near the tail that makes a lovely contrast to the silver shine on their underbelly.

I was doing a water change and the lot, the SAEs and the Denison barbs joined into one big school, very cute... The small clown loach came out and shot to the surface thinking I am going to feed them, lol...He was out for a surprise...

I did something stupid. I planted some Dill in the water floating. I've got floating planters from years ago that I never used. I took one out the other day and hung it on one of the intakes to block the flow from blowing salvinia behind the baskets, so it stood bare. Now its got some dill in it...We were at supermarket for the weekly shopping. I had some left over dill from the pot and it ended up in the tank...:rolleyes: I wonder if it will grow...Gonna take a picture later if not too lazy..It doesn't look too good. o_O

I am thinking I've got a seriously bad nitrogen deficiency I can't overcome for some reason even with the tons of food feeding the fish and dosing...The salvinia, which is pretty easy to grow, has chlorosis/necrosis on its old leaves and the new growth, although green and healthy enough looking, is pretty much too small, just like nitrogen deficiency...All the water hyacinth is the same although I've got two new healthy plantlets. So old growth is affected majorly..

I dumped a lot of KNO3 after the water change this time, like lots by the scoop... dry...Let's see what happens now that they've got more light...Maybe my ferts are a bit too old and not working. I think I got them about 2-3 years ago and considering the damp in this country, it may have gone off...
 
Manisha said:
At 0.38 - that loach is ENORMOUS! They are very playful & seem very 'fond' of your (pleco?!) :D
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Ha, ha. It looks like they are pestering him but I know he is totally unfazed by them :) That loach is 9 inches. He's a female and they are normally larger than the males :) I happened to measure her by accident as she stood over a knife that held a cucumber and covered the lot of it. The knife is 9 inches :)

This loach is my largest and oldest. She was a rescue. I've personally had her for just over 3 years. I found her in a small local pet shop which only sells goldfish. . She was abandoned by its previous owner in there and held in a 10G tank in the shop, quite stressed out. I didn't want to buy her at first not wanting to risk the health of my current loaches but kept returning to check on her, hoping someone had picked her up. After seeing her stressing out for two weeks, I bought her.

She must had been kept as a lone loach previously because it took her ages to join my other group of loaches ( I only had 5 at the time). By ages I mean months and months swimming solitary but she is now the alpha loach and leads the group, and quite friendly at that, so I got lucky. The previous alpha, which is the second largest loach I have at only 4 years old, was always very skittish, so was the entire shoal of fish because of that. Now that they follow this loach, its an entirely different story.

she has grown lots since I bought her, at around 1 inch per year which is extremely fast for a clown loach. She literally eats like a pig. If I am not careful, she's capable of eating all blood worms in one go, several cubes worth, because she shoots for my hand and just wipes everything like a good "puppy" :)

That's how she looked like the day after I got her in 2013

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A year later in 2014 when she could still fit in her favourite tube without sticking half her body out...
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In 2015 below. The picture is not great but you can notice she's grown in length as she's more elongated.

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And here she is the biggest in the bunch from today 2016, 3 years later and a lot of patience to get her to like me :p

 
sciencefiction said:
So my SAES don't eat algae and behave like bottom fish
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sciencefiction said:
wonder when are the SAEs going to settle........

They are making my head spin... They still do circles around the tank...From time to time the odd one would go clean a leaf or join the barbs but the moment he sees the rest passing, he goes "at the races"...So much about them fish being algae eaters :rolleyes:...They like the fish food too much too...
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They sound like typical juvenile SAE that are likely tank bred & accustomed to eating fish food rather than scrounging for algae ... if you're comfortable not feeding for a few days, you may be able to trigger their browsing instincts ... but as they mature they become more food focused as well
(how certain are you of correct species id)
Your SAE have got a fabulous lifestyle :D

Do you have Oto's in the tank?
 
alto said:
Do you have Oto's in the tank?
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No, no otos. They all died one by one(I had had them for years prior) due to overstocking as a result of my broken tanks....I don't feel like getting any because of fresh memory...

I saw the SAEs the odd times eating some algae but for short periods of time. They are too busy swimming around like lunatics. They also love eating stuff from the pre-filter sponges....
I am sure they are Chrossocheilus Langei but as you said they might have been accustomed to fish food. They do not line up for food as the denison barbs every time I look in the tank(they are getting the hint though), so I try not to feed them much, only what they find fallen on the substrate. Plus when they do get accross a pellet of food, they spent all the time quarrelling who's going to eat it (really funny) and by the time they finish, some other fish has taken it away..:) It won't hurt skip the feeding for a couple of days..I do have some BBA on the anubias that was there from my previous tank but it is not excessive and not on all leaves. Perhaps the algae is too old for them. Apart from that, there shouldn't be much algae for them to eat yet...They do love bloodworms though :)
 
It's been a busy week, not much time at all to observe the fish but I had a good look at the tank this evening.

The water hyacinth is still not doing well at all. The necrosis on the older leaves, and some not so old, keeps developing...I am not sure what the issue is right now...The other emersed plants like my peace lilies and parlour palm, etc... are not affected by the same. The salvinia is affected but not to such extent. It keeps growing dwarfed type of leaves but besides that there isn't much damage/yellowing or necrosis/chlorosis, if any. The root system on both though is not great..... So my guess is that either the floaters can't compete with my other emersed plants or the water surface agitation is too much for them. However, I watched a video of the Amazon River where the water hyacinth ends up covering miles and miles of surface...So how is my tank much more turbulent than the amazon river....Should I probably dose much more ferts/get new ferts because mine may not be doing anything, particularly the macros.....I already completely killed the sensitive fern.....

My baby clown loach is doing well and he finally lost his fear of the larger ones. Before he used to run away from them because he thought they were chasing him...But that's what clown loaches do, they follow each other, the poor little thing had no clue :) Now he's up there with the rest. He also joins the denison barbs a lot and comes for food when I feed them during the day...at weekends at least because I am not at home during week days.

I haven't been able to keep count of the denison barbs...It's impossible to count them so I don't know if I still have 9 but I haven't seen any fish behaving oddly and even the "runt" seems to be in pretty good shape. It's a tad smaller than the rest of the school but other than that looks healthy and happy.

The extra light over the last week doesn't seem to have caused "algae" issues yet although I have it on max intensity at 8 hours plus the overhanging flood light which illuminates mostly the emersed plants at the back and is on for 11 hrs. The emersed plants seem to be appreciating that extra light a lot. My peace lilies are growing healthy big new leaves and even the other fern(forgot the name of it) and the parlour palm have new growth since last week again. I am wondering though...if that's the reason they are doing better than the floaters, because they've always got better light, the window light, now the kessil and the flood light.....On my old tank, when I had the healthiest plants above and under water, I had 145 W of high power LEDs, anything less and my plants started suffering visually in no time...That tank was shallower as well..
 
So....it turns out there are big holes in the root system of the water hyacinth. This only my clown loaches can do and I heard them clicking madly at it a few times...Every damaged/rotting part of the plants has a hole underneath....I may need to get some of those pond protectors with a mesh if I find any to buy or the plants won't make it....

An interesting thing I noticed with my bristlenose pleco...My JBL filter spraybar is half above the water now, in a vertical position. I saw the pleco twice sitting right in there getting blown by the water flow and believe me, its very strong..But he seems fascinated by it and he's quite capable of holding his grip against it and just sitting there getting a "water massage".

And a video of by denison barbs from today. I think they have grown since I got them a few weeks back. The video doesn't do them justice because they are in a shadow. But at least it helped me count them. There are still 9 healthy denison barbs in there..and 5 SAEs :) I had fed them 30 min prior to taking the video but when they see me standing there they come near me for food, every time now...It took them a couple of weeks to do so though but they picked up fast enough :) In about 0:50 I zoomed on them so it gives a better view..

 
Don't know why my camera phone takes those vertical videos....very annoying....

Anyway, here below are my SAEs fighting over zucchini. They keep kicking each other away from it until the pleco comes over and stops the fight, lol...They do that over dry food too..I haven't seen them do that to the denison barbs so I am guessing its some sort of dominance behaviour and establishing hierarchy amongst themselves...

 
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